The one experience I had with peer review before leaving academia was actually pretty nice. One of the reviewers was a bit of a hardass, but they made good points and I think made the paper much better.

As a consumer of papers now, I find peer review pretty useful. I can’t read everything that comes out. Even if I just read abstracts, I need some sort of filter. Publication in a top tier journal raises the probability that egregious errors haven’t been made and that the paper is worthy of my time.